This is as good a day as any to remember that Ben Bernanke's Fed under Obama bailed out the banksters and hung 6.5 million homeowners out to dry

 Bloomberg, August 21, 2011, here:

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley, got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress. ...

Homeowners are more than 30 days past due on their mortgage payments on 4.38 million properties in the U.S., and 2.16 million more properties are in foreclosure, representing a combined $1.27 trillion of unpaid principal, estimates Jacksonville, Florida-based Lender Processing Services Inc. ...

Congress required the disclosure after the Fed rejected requests in 2008 from the late Bloomberg News reporter Mark Pittman and other media companies that sought details of its loans under the Freedom of Information Act. After fighting to keep the data secret, the central bank released unprecedented information about its discount window and other programs under court order in March 2011.

 

Possible foreclosure motive for Ford accusation falls apart: Kavanaugh's mother dismissed the motion

FOX reports here:

The records suggest that the dismissal was granted after the Blaseys and the bank cut a deal that avoided a sale of the property at a foreclosure auction.

Martha Kavanaugh signed off on the motion after the case had initally been assigned to another judge.

Brett Kavanaugh's accuser might have had revenge motive for foreclosure on her parents' home

Brett Kavanaugh's mother apparently was the presiding judge in the foreclosure on the home of the parents of Kavanaugh's accuser.

Reported here.

Wells Fargo sets aside $8 million to compensate about 400 homeowners foreclosed from 2010-2015 due to computer glitch

Well whoopdedoo. That's about only $20,000 a pop.

Sorry you lost your job. Here's a sandwich.

Story here.

Trump acts like he had nothing to do with appointing the people who oppose his own policies . . .

. . . just like Obama acted like he had nothing to do with country's unemployment, low GDP and home foreclosures for years after he was first elected.

New York Times blames housing unaffordability on mortgage interest deduction, never mentions how the Fed just reinflated the housing bubble quite apart from it

Here.

Housing was on its way to being affordable again until the Feds stepped in to stop foreclosures from rising and prices from falling, late in 2008. As a result of rock bottom interest rates which existing owners used to refinance their mortgages, housing is now more expensive than it has ever been, but the Times attacks the mortgage interest deduction for causing the problem.

Prices are up 47% since the 2009 low, in just eight years! The mortgage interest deduction was invented over 100 years ago, and helped to build the post-war middle class.

The Times seems bent on further destroying it.

University of Georgia historian minimizes the magnitude of foreclosures during the Great Depression, missing their significance for the value of homeownership today

Stephen Mihm, at Bloomberg here:

While home ownership became increasingly popular in the early twentieth century, the U.S. was still a majority-renter nation in 1930, though by this time homeowners numbered 48 percent of the total population. But the Great Depression knocked that figure back down to 43 percent, roughly on par with late nineteenth century levels.

Things changed dramatically in the 1940s, when home ownership levels began moving toward unprecedented highs, hitting 66 percent by 1980. Economists are still arguing over why that happened, but the most compelling explanations are pretty banal and do little to support the sentimental blather associated with home ownership.

Does this guy even know that the nonfarm foreclosure rate nearly quadrupled between 1926 and 1933?

Through 1933 there were over 1 million completed foreclosures, about 1% of US population of the time. Compare that to the current crisis. We've had 8.5 million completed foreclosures since 2004, about 2.5% of population. 

Homeownership as a cultural value in the post-war was so high because so many people lost their homes before it.

And it still is today and will continue to be, despite what some people say with an axe to grind from the safety of their sinecures.

Rush Limbaugh is wrong, as usual, about Obamacare passing the Senate without 60 votes

Obamacare passed the Senate 60-39 on December 24, 2009 with 58 Democrat and 2 Independent votes (one Republican did not vote, Jim Bunning).

The House passed this bill unchanged March 21, 2010, thus avoiding having to go through the House-Senate conference process and another vote again in each chamber. The bill's elements, if changed, were subject to filibuster back in the Senate because Scott Brown's election to the Senate in the interim on January 19, 2010 foreclosed the possibility of Democrats being able to overcome the 59-41 barrier.  60 votes are required to overcome the filibuster.

Reconciliation was used instead to change only budgetary elements in the bill, which were wanted by the Democrats in the House. For reconciliation purposes, simple majorities only are necessary.

Without a filibuster proof Senate majority, Republicans will be unable to repeal Obamacare.

Their only option is to gut the budgetary elements using their majorities in the House and Senate.

Obamacare will not go away in form until the stars align and Republicans capture 60 seats in the Senate.

It can only go away in practice in the interim by defunding it.

Republicans should re-pass the 2015 repeal legislation, which Obama vetoed, and send it to Trump for his signature as a downpayment.

Update:

Here is the Big Boob on the Right, getting it wrong today:

CALLER: Did the Democrats have 60 when they passed all this? I mean, what the hell?
RUSH: No, the Democrats did not. That’s why they used what’s known as budget reconciliation for many aspects of Obamacare, which was trickery. They didn’t have 60 votes. The Republicans, however, did not have the votes to stop anything at the time.  

Robert Barnes: Obama and his team face jeopardy if they got a FISA warrant by withholding information

From his carefully presented state of the case here at Lawnewz:

and so, third, Obama circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (and apparently under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the FISA court unwittingly granted, which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump. Are these allegations true? We don’t know yet, but if any part of them are then Obama and/or his officials could face serious trouble.

Can a President be charged with a crime? Only once out of office. While in office, impeachment remains the exclusive remedy in order to avoid a single judicial branch trying to overturn an election, such as a grand jury in any part of the country could. Once out of office, a President remains immune from civil liability for his duties while President, under a 1982 decision of the United States Supreme Court. However, as the Nixon pardon attests, nothing forecloses a criminal prosecution of the President after his presidency is complete for crimes against the country. Obama, the Constitutional lawyer, should know that.

Completed foreclosures in April 2015 reported by Corelogic still running 90% above normal

The level has not budged much from October 2014 when there were 41,000 completed foreclosures.

Seen here:

There were 40,000 completed foreclosures nationwide in April 2015, down from 50,000 in April 2014. ... 

Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 5.7 million completed foreclosures across the country, and since homeownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been approximately 7.8 million homes lost to foreclosure. ...

As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.

Kevin Drum admits ObamaCare is a cost to the middle class, not a benefit

Here in Mother Jones last November:

[N]early all [ObamaCare's] benefits flow to the poor. ... winners are those with household incomes below $25,000 or so, and losers are those with incomes above $25,000. ... If you think of Obamacare as something that benefits the working and middle classes, you're probably wrong. It may benefit a few of them, but overall it's a cost to them ... the bottom line is simple: like most of the social welfare programs championed by Democrats, Obamacare is primarily aimed at the poor. Once again, the working and middle classes are left on the outside looking in.

--------------------------------------------------------

First Obama did nothing about housing, the sine qua non of the middle class: Over five million completed foreclosures eliminated millions from the middle class without firing a shot.

Then he did nothing about jobs, without which no one buys a house: 18 million have been added to the potential workforce but haven't actually joined it.

Then he rammed through healthcare reform, which was designed to raise costs on the middle class.

And people wonder how Obama could even think of taxing their 529 plans?

The middle class is the enemy of the revolution, the object of the transformation, the source for the redistribution.

Obama says you're better off than when he took office, except you are not

click to enlarge

Obama says, quoted here:

"Like the rest of America, black America in the aggregate is better off now than it was when I came into office."

On the contrary:

Full-time jobs have not recovered to their 2007 peak and won't until summer 2015, if we are lucky. That will be eight years later, when full-time jobs in the past have always bounced back after at most three years in post-war recessions. Obama has done nothing for jobs, except to let the problem fester and try to heal itself.

Health insurance costs much more, covers much less and has narrower and less convenient networks. The proof of this is in the polling, where the majority of Americans remain opposed to ObamaCare. The minority which likes ObamaCare is benefiting from it at the expense of those who don't, who are more numerous. It's called income redistribution. Otherwise known as socialism. You know, like in Cuba, Obama's new best friend.

Owners' equity in household real estate stands at 53.94%, still almost 10% below where it was in 2005. Completed foreclosures in the last month are still running 95% above normal.

More than half of the 66% of Americans who have saved anything for retirement have individually saved less than $25,000. American taxpayers are forced to contribute on average 13.5% to the pensions of the country's government employees and save for themselves only at the rate of 5%.

But perhaps the most damning indictment of Obama is how Americans of all stripes have been impoverished under his watch. Real median household income in the US is lower now than when the recession ended in Obama's first term in 2009, and much lower than when he took office:

"At this point, real household incomes are in worse shape than they were four years ago when the recession ended."

Lies told often enough can become the truth, but they are still lies.

Despite big declines, completed foreclosures in October 2014 are still running 95% above normal

So says Corelogic here.

Completed foreclosures in October 2014 came to 41,000 nationally, 20,000 higher than the 2000-2006 average of 21,000 per month. Still, the level represents a big drop over the past year and is part of a consistent decline in houses reaching completed foreclosure going back 36 months.

4.2% of all mortgages were in serious delinquency in October.

FL, MI, TX, CA and GA alone accounted for 256,000 of 561,000 completed foreclosures in all states in the last twelve months, almost 46% of the total.

Michigan is still tops among non-judicial states in October for completed foreclosures in the last twelve months: 45,000.

Florida is tops in judicial states in the last 12 months: 118,000 completed foreclosures.

The half million plus completed foreclosures in the last twelve months represents the lowest level since October 2007 according to Corelogic. The relatively few additions since the September report mean that completed foreclosures since 2008 continue to hover around the 5.2 million level.

All figures are rounded.

Stupid things heard on the Steve Gruber Show radio program last week

Both the AM drive-time host, Steve Gruber, a libertarian for whom every opponent is taken as a challenge to his manhood, and his weekly punching bag guest, Liberal Lee, last Tuesday agreed that the middle class in America is basically . . .  intact!

Which just proves that ideologues are impervious to the destruction which has been all around them and that libertarians and liberals drink from the same cup. Both camps are too heavily invested in the political gangs they support to say otherwise, for if the one did it would mean George Bush and Alan Greenspan would have to be blamed, and if the other, Barack Obama, Larry Summers and the rest of the Clinton re-treads which steered the economy through the latest depression to give you . . . nearly $90 billion in costs for over 500 failed banks, over 5 million homes lost to foreclosure, full-time jobs still 4 million below the 2007 peak seven years ago, ObamaCare's lies, higher costs, poorer coverage and limited networks, the deaths of Americans at Benghazi, IRS targeting of conservatives, the most imperial presidency in our history, 30 million prime working age people not working, a lawless executive, and 1.8% GDP, the worst in the post-war.

For his part, Gruber basically gave over a segment on his show every week this fall to the reelection campaign of Congressman Tim Walberg, a conventional Republican who normally votes with the majority of his caucus, but who did vote against making the Bush tax cuts permanent for the vast majority of Americans. Walberg notably just rewarded his radio benefactor who opposed Cromnibus with a vote for it, in keeping with his past voting record for sweeping spending bills which avoid the traditional appropriations process in order to take the politics out of spending the people's money. Hey, thanks Gruber.

The Steve Gruber Show is unfortunately heard on many small market radio stations during morning drive throughout Michigan, which through August 2014 was the top state for completed foreclosures among non-judicial states for the prior twelve month period. But the show's best rank is only #3 in the Lansing market according to dar.fm, and #31 in the mornings overall, here. The best thing that can be said for it is that the stations it is on are typically low-power, like its commentary. 

Democrats lost last week simply because voters tired of waiting for full-time jobs to recover

Examine the record here of full-time job losses in recessions since 1969 and you will see that full-time jobs recovered to their previous peaks in 2 years after 1969, 2 years after 1974, about 3 years after 1981, 3 years after 1990 and about 3 years after 2000.

But after 2007? Full-time jobs have yet to recover, over 7 years since peaking in July 2007 at 123.2 million.

It's true that total nonfarm employment recovered to the November 2007 high this June, after 6.5 long years, but full-time is still 3 million below the 2007 peak.

The voting public has been very patient with President Obama and the Democrats. They know this was the biggest jobs debacle in the post-war. From peak to trough between July 2007 and January 2010 14.442 million full-time jobs were lost, beating the 8.1 million lost from 1981 under Reagan by a wide margin, a 9.3% loss. The percentage lost from the peak was also highest in the post-war, down 11.7% in the recent catastrophe vs. the 9.6% loss of full-time jobs from August 1974, the previous most recent top episode for full-time job destruction in percentage terms.

So it's understandable that voters might have re-elected Obama and the Democrat Senate in 2012 on the presumption that such a serious episode would take longer to fix. But even so it was still a relatively close election.

Last Tuesday's nationwide blow-out of Democrats, however, from the US Senate on down through the US House, governorships and state legislative chambers shows that the patience of the country has run out. While full-time jobs have roared back in the last 12 months it is likely that the trend has peaked for the year and that it will be next summer before we see full-time recover fully.

That will be 8 years . . . 5 years too many for many of the millions who lost their jobs to put their lives back together and rejoin the middle class. Five years too many for those who lived in the 5+million homes lost to foreclosure. For them there remains the hope only of minimum and low wage work, food stamps, government disability assistance, Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare and early death.

Obama will be remembered for attempting this hollowing out of the middle class, and some will correctly conclude it was intentional on the part of the country's first Bolshevik president.

"[T]he mass of middle class parasites which lived on the back of the old order is now, equally ready to live on the back of the proletarian State."   

Completed foreclosures in September still 119% above normal

Corelogic reports here that completed foreclosure activity reached 46,000 nationally in September, 25,000 above the normal 21,000 level before the housing apocalypse began in 2007.

The report indicates there have been 5.2 million completed foreclosures since September 2008 and 7 million homes lost to foreclosure since 2004, ten years ago.

Florida, California, Texas, Michigan and Georgia alone account for almost half of all completed foreclosures in September.

The housing riot: Average time in mortgage delinquency is 2.7 years nationwide, 4 years in New York State

Lawlessness and mayhem isn't just for po folk in Ferguson, Missouri, where law enforcement was overwhelmed by the bad actors doing millions of dollars in damage on the streets. Same goes for freeloaders in judicial mortgage states like New York where the authorities do not have the capacity to deal with the widespread problem of non-payment.

From Michael Sincere, here:

Millions of homeowners are already seriously delinquent. “The average length of time that houses remain delinquent nationwide is 995 days,” [Keith] Jurow says. “The worst culprit is New York State. The average delinquency period there is four years.” Many homeowners are aware that banks are not in a rush to file foreclosures, so they stay in their houses mortgage-free. “The banks are not initiating foreclosure proceedings because once the servicer forecloses, the lender takes a hit on earnings,” Jurow says. “They also have to manage the property, and most banks don’t want to do that.”

Completed foreclosure activity in May 2014 still 2.2 times above pre-2007 levels

CoreLogic reports here:

According to CoreLogic, for the month of May 2014, there were 47,000 completed foreclosures nationally, down from 52,000 in May 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 9.4 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures were up by 3.8 percent from the 45,000 reported in April 2014. As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006. ... The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were: New Jersey (5.8 percent), Florida (5.2 percent), New York (4.3 percent), Hawaii (3.1 percent) and Maine (2.8 percent).

FiveThirtyEight Economists Assert But Don't Demonstrate Distributional Characteristics Of Great Recession Spending Pullback

I refer to "Why the Housing Bubble Tanked the Economy And the Tech Bubble Didn’t" by AMIR SUFI and ATIF MIAN, here, where they basically blame the spending pullback of the Great Recession on the poorest, most indebted homeowners:

"The poor cut spending much more for the same dollar decline in wealth. This fact is one of the most robust findings in all of macroeconomics, ... It also makes intuitive sense."

Their forthcoming book may show this, but this article surely doesn't.

They present data which tell us about homeowners' housing as a share of their net worth by quintiles, their mortgages as a share of their home values by quintiles, and about the net worth of richest and poorest homeowners. These are useful distributional observations which, unfortunately, in the case of spending are missing in the presentation! You'd think they would be present in a story which attacks traditional economists like Ben Bernanke for ignoring distributional data sets. Ah, yeah.

Apart from whether showing the distributional characteristics of the spending pullback is even possible, I wonder if it makes any sense that the poorest homeowners could cut their spending enough to account for the sums involved, which is what traditional economists wonder. Weren't they the ones primarily represented in the 5.6 million who lost their homes to foreclosure in the first place?

Using November 2007 real retail and food service sales as the baseline ($179.37 billion), the cumulative month to month shortfall from that to November 2012 came to $663.09 billion. Yes, it took five full years for real retail to recover. But the peak to trough decline in real GDP from 4Q2007 to 2Q2009 alone, on the other hand, was $639.2 billion, not even half way through the great retail depression. Retail spending shows only part of the picture.

Which is why it's wrong to imply, as the authors do, that the decline in spending, supposedly linked to the poorest homeowners, explains the Great Recession. It only explains about a third of it, but just how much of that can be blamed on the poorest homeowners remains a mystery.

Foreclosure's Ground Zero Finally Shifts To New Jersey And New York After Region Being In "Suspended Animation" For Years

So reports Bloomberg here in late February:

The epicenter of the U.S. foreclosure crisis is shifting to New Jersey and New York, threatening a housing rebound in one of the country’s most densely populated areas. ...

The number of New York and New Jersey homeowners losing their houses reached a three-year high in 2013. Banks in these states have been slowly working through a backlog of delinquent loans that enabled borrowers to skip mortgage payments for years. ...

“It is really a delayed reaction in New Jersey and New York,” said Michael Fratantoni, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. “Loans that were made pre-crisis have been in this state of suspended animation for a number of years. And now, we are beginning to see the pace of resolution pick up.”

Keith Jurow has been warning about this since at least early 2013.